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The
Falling Figure
has entranced connoisseurs and collectors
over the years for the intensity of emotion it captured in the
moment of absolute distress. Krishen Khanna, fellow artist and
a dear friend of Mehta, was among the first to recognise the
force of Mehta's art. In an introductory note to the exhibition
of Mehta's paintings at the Kumar Gallery in 1966, Khanna
writes, "You keep asking a question of us all and the process of
examination of our values is continuous." Khanna acquired one
of the earliest
Falling Figures
(top), similar to the present lot, and
entered it in the First Triennale of Contemporary World Art in
New Delhi in 1968. That painting was one of two gold medal
winning works in the Indian section of the Triennale.
Falling Figure
, 1965
Saffronart, New Delhi, 16 February 2017, lot 46
Sold at INR 6 crores (USD 909,091)
Falling Figure with Bird
, 1988
Saffronart, 19 – 20 September 2012, lot 40
Sold at INR 9.6 crores (USD 1.8 million)
THE ENDURING IMPORTANCE
OF THE FALLING FIGURE
In
Ideas Images Exchanges
, poet and art
critic Dilip Chitre cites a review of Mehta’s
early
Falling Figures
: “...in the simple act of
falling, Tyeb takes us on into ametaphysical
riddle. The falling is vertiginous; and
metaphorically expresses man’s freedom
in the very act of infinite questing. It
is the adventure of floating alone on
a sea of awareness, or getting sucked,
unresisting, down its velvet vortices.” (
The
Link
, 20 February 1966, as quoted in Ranjit
Hoskote, Ramchandra Gandhi et. al.,
Tyeb
Mehta: Ideas Images Exchanges
, New Delhi:
Vadehra Art Gallery, 2005, p. 326)
The present lot, painted in 1965, is among
the earliest of the iconic
Falling Figure
series that Mehta began in the mid‒
sixties. Within the hazy, ephemeral, flesh‒
toned forms that emerge from a sea of
blue, one finds the seeds of what would
become the seminal series of Mehta’s
career. Mehta’s
Falling Figure
series of
PROPERTY FROM THE FAMILY OF
TYEB MEHTA
98
TYEB MEHTA
(1925 ‒ 2009)
Falling Figure
Signed and dated 'Tyeb 65' (upper right)
1965
Oil on canvas
40.75 x 29.75 in (103.3 x 75.5 cm)
$ 312,500 ‒ 468,750
Rs 2,00,00,000 ‒ 3,00,00,000
PROVENANCE:
Gifted by the artist to his daughter
PUBLISHED:
Ranjit Hoskote, Ramachandra Gandhi et.
al.,
Tyeb Mehta: Ideas Images Exchanges
,
New Delhi: Vadehra Art Gallery, 2005, p. 79
(illustrated)
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